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Sumner ghost hunters get television show

Josh Cross, jcross@mtcngroup.com
2:49 p.m. CDT August 29, 2014

Steven “Doogie” McDougal and Brannon Smith, members of the Tennessee Wraith Chasers, during an investigation at the Hayswood Infirmary in Maysville, Ky. for their new Destination America show “Ghost Asylum.”
(Photo:
Submitted
)

Starting next month, TV viewers can track Sumner County ghost hunters as they investigate paranormal activity in the South.

The show "Ghost Asylum" debuts 9 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7 on Destination America and features the Tennessee Wraith Chasers.

Formed in 2009, the group is made up of five Gallatin and Portland residents, which include founder Chris Smith, co-founder Steven "Doogie" McDougal, Scott Porter, Brannon Smith and Chasey Ray McKnight.

"It has been really surreal," Smith said. "This is the first time that we've ever had the opportunity to go out of state this far … We've never been to any places like this before."

In the past, the TWC has typically investigated small residential haunting cases through Tennessee.

But for the show filmed earlier this year, the group traveled to locations in Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi and North Carolina to conduct paranormal investigations at abandoned asylums, hospitals and metal institutions, which are featured during six one-hour episodes.

"As soon as you walk into these places, the thing that really hits you and that resonates through those walls is all the death and torment," Smith said. "There are still things laying around in the hallways and rooms that patients and doctors used. To go up and touch one of those objects, you can almost feel their pain."

The TWC was chosen for the new television series "Ghost Asylum" after the group was featured in a pilot episode called "Ghostland Tennessee," which debuted last year on Animal Planet and was filmed entirely in Sumner County.

"Every town in America has some sort of haunted building on the hill with a mysterious legend or local ghost story that leaves (one) to question the truth and reality of lingering spirits," said Marc Etkind, general manager of Destination America. "Ghost Asylum follows the clever Tennessee Wraith Chasers as they enter the most petrifying locations, sharing shocking evidence and real life experiences on the hunt to trap the spirits luring around these haunted institutions."

Premiere features Kentucky hospital

During the "Ghost Asylum" premiere, the TWC investigated the Old War Memorial Hospital in Scottsville, Ky., where throughout its years of operation, the facility transformed from a place of healing to a holding cell for the mentally disturbed.

The hospital is said to be haunted by the spirit of a former doctor who lost his mind but returned to the exam rooms following his death.

"There are so many things that happened that shocked us that we had never had happen before," Smith said. "We had some incredible paranormal experiences there."

In addition to collecting evidence in order to debunk, disprove or validate each case, the TWC also attempts to physically capture spirits through ghost traps the group constructs.

"A couple years ago we started trying to develop a way to capture these entities or the energy of these spirits," Smith said. "We try to come up with some very inventive traps to do that. This particular one that we used — we're going to leave you guessing as to what it is — was pretty incredible as to the results that we got out of it."

By using the traps in abandoned asylums first, McDougal said it allows the group to safely test the experiments, which could be used to help families that are experiencing residential hauntings.

"Hopefully if they are evil, dark spirits, we can get them out and transfer them somewhere else to actually get them out of the equation of a place being haunted anymore," McDougal said.

Between the show, their full-time jobs and their families, the group has not had much free time to devote to requests for investigations, Smith said.

"I think we're still open to it," Smith said. "It's hard to get us all together at one time to do these things, but we're still open to it, especially if somebody comes to us with a genuine need or something that just sparks our interest or something that we feel like we can help out it."

Reach Josh Cross at 615-575-7115.

For more information

Learn more about about the Tennessee Wraith Chasers at www.tnwraithchasers.com.